Slowly, they took a few tentative steps toward each other before Peyton broke into a run. Without saying another word, he lifted her off the sidewalk and buried his face in her hair. Lisa was holding onto him as if she feared the tropical winds might take her. They were indeed getting stronger. Peyton felt a few pelts of rain hitting his back as he reluctantly lowered Lisa, still holding her tight against him, and kissed her forehead.

“We have to go or we’re gonna get drenched,” he said with a smile.

She nodded.

“Feel like takin’ a little run?”

Lisa’s eyes were glistening as she looked up at Peyton and nodded again.

“C’mon. I know a place that’s real close.” He took her by the hand, and they ran back to the empty cottage, making it up the steps and onto the porch just as the bottom fell out. Peyton had never seen such a rain, not even on Tybee.

Lisa’s eyes were wide as she stared out at the scene—a treehouse view of tropical green swaying under torrential rain, the darkening sky above them, white-capping turquoise water just beyond the mangroves out front. Peyton wasn’t paying much attention to the weather. After all this time and everything he had been through, he was actually in Key West with the girl he had dreamed of day and night, through mile after mile of heat and sweat and firehouses and strangers.

“You don’t think it’s a hurricane, do you?” she asked him.

“No,” he said. “Just a storm.”

Now they were both silently looking out at the water.

Finally, she turned to face him, staring at him with those blue eyes flecked with green—a whole ocean in Lisa’s eyes. They were teary as she softly said, “This is the first time I’ve felt safe since I got here.”

Peyton frowned and took her face in his hands. “Did somebody hurt you?”

She laid her hands over his. “No, nothing like that. It’s just that Bobbie Ann—my cousin—she’s a horrible human being.” Now the tears were streaming. “I can’t believe I was so stupid.”

“There’s nothing stupid about you, Lisa.” Peyton put his arms around her and held her close as the wind grew stronger, making a whistling noise in the trees. “Let’s go inside. We’ll sit out the storm, and you can tell me all about it.”

He opened the door for her and then unfastened some of the shutters on the front and back of the house, raising those windows to let the wind blow through.

Lisa was standing beside the chaise, looking a little hesitant. Peyton realized the back was folded all the way down and quickly raised it. “It’s not a bed,” he said. “It’s just a really big chair—with a really long seat.”

Lisa smiled and sat down with him on the lounger.

“Can you tell me what happened?” he asked.

She laid her head against his shoulder, and he put his arms around her as she told him what her cousin had done. “Bobbie Ann told her mother—and me—that our Great-Aunt Maude had invited us down. The truth was that when Aunt Maude telephoned to say she was going to Cuba for two weeks, Bobbie Ann took the call and volunteered the two of us to housesit. And Aunt Maude’s so senile that she never thought to check with Aunt Marilyn—that’s Bobbie Ann’s mother.”